A UNIVERSAL DATA EXCHANGE FORMAT FOR CRYSTALLOGRAPHY. B. McMahon, International Union of Crystallography, 5 Abbey Square, Chester CH1 2HU, England

The Crystallographic Information File (CIF) (Hall, Allen & Brown, 1991) is now the common exchange mechanism for crystallographic data supported by the IUCr. Increasingly, crystallographic program packages are able to read, write and validate CIF data. The file format has a simple syntactic structure, uses the ASCII character set for maximum portability between operating platforms, and is simply extensible. Dictionaries of recognised data names are constructed in a machine-readable formalism, allowing data relationships to be built and validated automatically.

This presentation will describe many current CIF applications, and discuss some of the considerations for successful programming of CIF software. There will also be a demonstration of how the IUCr uses standard software packages to check the quality of crystallographic data reported in its journals.

References

Hall, S. R., Allen, F. H. & Brown, I. D. (1991). Acta Cryst. A47, 655-685.